John McNally
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John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Stringer. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) for securing the debate on a subject that is close to my own heart.
As a small business owner, being a hairdresser and running a business employing staff, I appreciate the commitment and training that goes into running a small business for more than 50 years. I appreciate the trials and tribulations of people running their own business and what a powerful driver the small business sector is for growth and competition across the economy.
As the vice-chair—soon to be the chair, hopefully—of the all-party group on the hair industry, I fully appreciate the work that has gone into the Hair Council, which I believe includes more than 250,000 hairdressing businesses in Britain. It supplies a huge amount of effort and employment, especially in support of local town centres. I welcome the opportunity to support the Small Business Saturday campaign and to highlight the business successes in my constituency and throughout Falkirk district.
Over the past two years alone, more than 1,057 new businesses in my constituency have been registered at Companies House. Falkirk has benefited from the steady increase in successful entrepreneurship and business development, with many successful businesses supplying other local businesses in the area. That is in no small part due to initiatives such as Small Business Saturday, a grassroots, non-commercial campaign that highlights small business success and encourages consumers to shop locally and support small businesses in their communities.
As my hon. Friend said, Small Business Saturday takes place on the first Saturday in December. It is my hope that the campaign will have a long-lasting effect on businesses and shopping habits in Falkirk and towns throughout the district, as well as Scotland-wide. Nationally, our small businesses are well supported by the Scottish Government’s small business bonus scheme, which has benefited more than 99,000 commercial properties in Scotland and helped the number of small businesses in Scotland to increase by more than 50% over the past 15 years.
Locally, Falkirk benefits from an excellent district business improvement team in the form of Falkirk Delivers, headed by Alex and Sarah. Their team have a similar ethos to that of Small Business Saturday and have the mantra of keeping things local, which is more than a “use it or lose it” message. It is about supporting businesses that have supported the town and have evolved the way in which they do business to benefit our communities and local people. It is about appreciating local knowledge, providing excellent customer service, and retaining money within our local economy to ensure that our towns are a thriving and vibrant place to shop, live and work, and providing a feel-good factor about them.
Falkirk benefits from a diverse range of businesses located at its core. The town has two covered shopping centres, Howgate and Callendar Square, in which national retail businesses are located, but what distinguishes Falkirk from other, larger towns is the diversity and range of smaller independent businesses. Falkirk also has a renowned and award-winning night-time economy, with a variety of pubs, cafés, restaurants and nightclubs, many of which are independently owned and managed.
Falkirk town centre, like many, has seen a change in the landscape over the past few years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde mentioned. Some of our national retailers have moved away from their traditional high street presence, and vacancy rates have hovered around the national average, but our small retailers seem to have weathered the economic downturn of the past few years better than most. I will keep supporting those small businesses in the best way I can.
Small Business Saturday, on 5 December, is an ideal vehicle to remind people to shop locally—at Stenhousemuir, Larbert, Denny, Dunipace, Bonnybridge, Laurieston and Polmont. I hope I have not left anywhere out, or there will be hell to pay when I get home.
The Falkirk Delivers team has a marketing campaign using print and social media that features many of our local independents. For example, we have Gems Sweets, where we can still buy Spanish Gold, Chelsea Whoppers or Lucky Tatties—perhaps that does not fit well with yesterday’s debate about the war on sugar, but they are quite tasty. A fixture in our town for more than 100 years has been G.W. Smith cycle shop. We have Coffee on Wooer, a trendy new artisan coffee shop that always has a space for local musicians, poets and writers to do their thing. The town’s Howgate centre recently launched INDY, an independent marketplace with small unit space, ideal for the have-a-go entrepreneur. It offers the best of both worlds, because it is located in a busy shopping centre but is aimed at encouraging and growing unique and individual independent businesses.
Such businesses are the heart of our town centre community. They are known, loved and trusted by locals and visitors alike. However, Small Business Saturday is not only about retail. Falkirk town centre is home to lawyers, accountants and translators—and we even have a 3D printer—all of whom rely heavily on local businesses, so Small Business Saturday and the wider “keep it local” campaign play a part for those services as well.
Falkirk Delivers and its partners are working on a range of projects and initiatives to continue to support the town centre during a time of change. With the £5 million-plus investment through the Townscape Heritage initiative, the successful launch of our “can do” space and projects such as the Carnegie Trust’s TestTown, the message is that Falkirk is very much open and ready for business. I totally support my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde on this issue.